Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to annex Kiryat Arba, a settlement adjacent to Hebron, along with the Jewish areas in Hebron itself, if re-elected in the upcoming election on Tuesday.
The promise was made Monday morning in his interview for the "Good Morning Israel" show on Army radio.
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Monday's pledge goes further than what the prime minister has said during his visit to Hebron on September 4, when he vowed that Jews would never be driven out of the city.
This vow apparently fell short of what Netanyahu's right-wing allies expected, while also sparking anger among Palestinians.
Hebron, site of the Cave of the Patriarchs, where the forefathers and foremothers – Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah – are believed to be buried, is a major holy site for the Abrahamic religions. The cave is also the burial site of Adam and Eve according to Jewish tradition and of Joseph according to Muslim tradition.
Until 1929, Jewish and Arab communities lived side by side in Hebron, but Arab opposition to rising Jewish immigration to the area, fueled by rumors of threats to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, culminated in a massacre of 67 Jews in the city. As a result, the surviving Jewish community was moved out of the city by the British government.
After the Six-Day War of 1967, however, Jews started to come back to Hebron, making the divided city one of the icons of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In 1994, Hebron was again the site of a massacre when Dr. Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish resident of Kiryat Arba, opened fire on Muslim worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs, killing 29 and wounding 125.
Parts of this article were originally published by i24NEWS.
